If the plan was to accelerate environmental degradation, wipe out family farms, increase costs, and dramatically reduce water availability, then the Murray-Darling Basin Authority would have achieved top marks.

Most would like to see young Australians have the ability to farm, have healthy local landscapes that include farmland and forests, and clean, green Australian produce.

While the Wentworth Group has been advocating for more water buybacks, which will no doubt aid the water trading industry returns, while doing very little to address the fundamental failings of the Basin Plan, local Independent Member for Murray, Helen Dalton, has released a 13-step plan to aid in getting the current trainwreck back on the rails.

Dalton is calling on both state and federal governments to look at the many “sacred cows” of the political plan. Issues such as the famous South Australian Estuary, which identifies as a freshwater lake system, consuming thousands of gigalitres of water annually to prop up the freshwater delusion, while attempting to dilute the Southern Ocean and ignoring the loss of groundwater through the South East drainage schemes.

Dalton is even calling for an audit of environmental water held by the NSW, Vic and Commonwealth governments. 4,600 gigalitres are currently held as environmental water, and floods or additional river flows aren’t considered environmental water. That’s something that Dalton seeks to change, recognise all the environmental benefits of flood or conveyance water.

The thirteen steps include:

• No buybacks. The law previously required water recovery programs to avoid harming rural communities, but these recent changes removed this protection. Now, negative impacts can be offset with payments instead of preventing the harm. We MUST reinstate these legislated protections to ensure water projects don’t hurt communities and only proceed if they have neutral or positive effects.
• Upgrade Burrinjuck Dam. Originally planned as 4 million megalitre capacity, but constructed to 1,025,000 due to engineering, financial and logistical challenges at that time. Scoping required as improvements in engineering, logistics and the current high value of water has removed most of the impediments.
• Lake Coolah. Flood mitigation and mid-Murrumbidgee storage at Lake Coolah and Lake Mejum, near Narrandera, would capture excess rainwater downstream of these dams and reduce flood impacts, improve efficiency for agriculture and the environmental water holder while reducing flood risk.
• The Menindee Solution. A proposed solution is to let 712GL flow through Menindee, reserving some for local needs, and swap it for water from the Murray system to improve supply and reduce restrictions, increasing water reliability, ease pressure on southern rivers during dry periods, and provide better tools for managing the environment.
• Lower Lakes. The fake Lower Lakes Alexandrina and Albert in South Australia lose large amounts of water through evaporation and disrupt the natural ecosystem by being an artificially and unnaturally maintained as freshwater rather than natural estuarine.
  
  The South East Drains of South Australia are also wasting freshwater and draining the aquifer. Changes must be implemented on these fake lakes to return an estuarine managed system which would save water, restore natural ecosystems, and improve balance across the Murray-Darling Basin.
• Installing accurate meters in NSW and expanding smart meters in South Australia will ensure water use is properly measured and managed. These changes will protect the environment, reduce wastage, and help farmers and communities use water sustainably. Meter, Monitor and Police Water use.
• Audit environmental water. A full independent and accurate water audit must be actioned. This would help determine if there’s already enough environmental water stripped from productivity.
• South Australia’s desalination plant has not been used to its potential. It can produce enough water to supply half of Adelaide’s needs but currently runs at reduced capacity. Solar projects at the plant are expected to cut running costs by 50 per cent, making this a more sustainable option.
• Include flooding events and conveyance water as an environmental benefit. Accurate measurement and reporting must give a clearer picture of how much water is actually flowing down the rivers. This would lead to more transparent and fair water management for communities, farmers and the environment.
• Scrap the failed National Water Agreement.
• Focus on water quality. Federal Government fixation on volumes neglects many environmental issues. We must prioritise cleaning and improving water quality to make it more effective for nature, human consumption and farming.
• Stop forcing floods onto private land.
• Protect property rights – no mandatory flooding.

This week, Federal Shadow Water Minister, Perin Davey stated that the latest publication from the Wentworth Group citing the failure of the $13 billion, 15-year investment into the Murray-Darling Basin confirms that the insanity has to stop.

“Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result and that is what we have been doing in water reform since the late 1980s,” Senator Davey said.

“The Wentworth Group points out that for over three decades, governments have been reducing access to water in the Basin for productive use but says the massive taxpayer investment has not delivered the promised benefits.

“That tells me that it is time we took a different approach.

“Instead of focusing on water recovery as we have done since the turn of the century, we should focus on system management.

“For example, we know in the Darling-Baaka, we have seen fish deaths following both record low and record high flows, so the problem can’t be just volume.

“We also have reports going back 40 years identifying the lack of fish passage in the Darling-Baaka, yet this has never been addressed.”

Senator Davey also pointed to the failure of any progress on constraints management as to the reason why the scientists found a lack of floodplain connection with 79 per cent of environmental water releases remaining within channel.

“This is a classic case of the perfect getting in the way of the good,” Senator Davey said.

“The models say you need a certain flow at a certain point, but the community says that is too high and the consequences too great.

“So instead of negotiating a liveable volume and considering associated engineering or management works to get some environmental benefit, we have a standoff which is not working for anyone.”

Senator Davey, however, agreed with the scientists’ assertions that clear targets need to be set and quality longitudinal monitoring should be reinstated.

“The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is effectively the largest irrigator in the Basin, yet unlike farmers who measure and meter water use and crop yield, they don’t report against any clearly defined benchmark,” Senator Davey said.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 5 December 2024.